drift.
Scientists assigned to the different labs inside the compound routinely fanned out across the continent and North America, sampling the DNA of various communities and ethnic groups for a wide array of historical, genetic, and medical research projects.
Early in the gray, damp morning, a black Mercedes sedan passed through the gate and parked near a large building set slightly apart from the others.
Two men wearing fur hats and dark-colored coats got out. Both were tall and broad-shouldered. One, blue- eyed with high Slavic cheekbones, stood waiting impassively near the car while the second man strode toward the building’s locked main entrance.
“Name?” a voice asked in thickly accented Italian from an intercom set beside the solid steel door.
“Brandt,” the big man said clearly. He turned slightly toward the security cameras set to cover the entrance, letting them scan first his face and then his profile.
There was a brief pause while the images captured by the cameras were matched against those on file in the security system computer. Abruptly, the intercom crackled to life again. “You are cleared to proceed, Signor Brandt,” the voice said. “Please enter your identifier code.”
The big man entered a ten-digit code sequence on the keypad next to the door and heard the multiple locks sealing it click open, one after another.
Once inside, he found himself in a gleaming, brightly lit corridor. Two hard-faced men, both cradling submachine guns, stood watching him closely from the adjacent guard station. One of them nodded politely toward a coat rack.
“You may leave your coat, hat, and weapon there, Signor.”
He smiled thinly, faintly pleased to find that the rigorous security procedures he had decreed were applied even to him. He found that a reassuring contrast to the bad news he had received earlier from Prague. He shrugged out of his coat and then stripped off the shoulder holster containing his Walther pistol. He hung both of them on a hook and then doffed his fur hat, revealing a shock of pale blond hair.
“We’ve informed Dr. Renke of your arrival,” one of the armed guards told him. “He is waiting for you in the main lab.”
Erich Brandt, the man code-named Moscow One, nodded calmly. “Very well.”
The main lab took up nearly half of the building. Computers, boxlike DNA sequencers and synthesizers, chromatography cells, coffee-grinder-sized electroporation machines, and sealed tubes of reagents, enzymes, and other chemicals crowded a line of black-topped benches. Other doors led into isolation chambers used to culture the required viral and bacteriological materials.
Technicians and scientists wearing sterile gowns, gloves, surgical masks, and clear plastic face shields hovered around the equipment, carefully moving through the rigidly prescribed set of steps necessary to produce each unique HYDRA variant.
Brandt stopped near the door and stood watching the complicated process with interest, but very little real comprehension. Although Wulf Renke had tried explaining the intricacies involved several times before, Brandt had always found himself lost in a sea of scientific jargon.
The tall, blond-haired man shrugged. Did it really matter? He had the skills necessary to kill coldly and precisely, and HYDRA was a weapon much like any other. Boiled down to its non-scientific essentials, the mechanisms of HYDRA’s manufacture and killing power were cruelly simple in theory, though complicated in execution.
First, one obtained a sample of the intended victim’s DNA?from a piece of hair, a fragment of skin, a bit of mucus, or even from the oils left in a fingerprint. Then came the painstaking process of sorting through key sections of the gene-filled chromosomes, looking for specific patches of the genetic sequence that were unique to each individual and also associated with cell replication. Once that was done, one prepared single strands of so-called cDNA?complimentary DNA?creating precise mirror images of the chosen target patches.
The next step required altering a relatively small, single-stranded DNA virus active in humans. Using various chemical processes, it was possible to strip out everything except the genes associated with its protective protein coat and those that allowed the virus to penetrate into the very heart, the nuclei, of human cells. The carefully crafted patches of cDNA obtained from the victim’s genome were added and the altered virus was looped into a ring, creating a self-replicating plasmid.
After that, these viral plasmids could be inserted into a benign strain of E. coli, bacteria, one found commonly in the human gut. Then all that remained was to culture and concentrate these modified strains of E. coli, building up a useful amount of the material, and the HYDRA variant was ready for delivery to the selected target.
Essentially, invisible, odorless, and tasteless, these bacteria could easily be administered to the person marked for death through any combination of food or drink. Once ingested, the modified bacteria would lodge in the gut and begin multiplying rapidly. As they grew, they would constantly throw off the genetically altered viral particles, which would be carried by the bloodstream throughout the body.
Brandt knew that these viral particles were the key killing component in HYDRA. By their very nature they were designed to pierce the walls of human cells. Once inside a cell, each particle would inject the edited patches of cDNA into the nucleus. In anyone but the intended target, nothing else would happen. But inside the selected victim, a far deadlier process would he-gin unfolding. As soon as the cell nucleus began replicating itself, those mirror-image patches would automatically attach to the pre-selected portions of chromosomal DNA, blocking any further replication. The whole intricate process of cell division and reproduction ?absolutely essential to life ?would come to a screeching halt?much like a zipper jammed by a piece of cloth.
As more and more cells became infected and stopped reproducing, HYDRA victims would suffer aches, high fevers, and skin rashes. The failure of the fastest-replicating cells ?hair follicles and bone marrow ?produced symptoms resembling the wasting and anemia seen in radiation poisoning. Ultimately, of course, the cascading destruction extended to whole organs and systems, leading inevitably to a lingering and painful death.
There was no cure. Nor could HYDRA be detected by any practical means. Doctors, trying desperately to isolate the cause of this unknown disease, would never think to look at the ultra-common, seemingly harmless, and non-infectious bacteria hidden away inside each victim’s gut.
Brandt smiled with pleasure at the thought. Undetectable, unstoppable, and incurable, HYDRA was the perfect assassin’s weapon. In many ways, he thought sardonically, Renke and his team were crafting microscopic versions of the precision-guided bombs and missiles of which the Americans were so fond of boasting, with the exception that HYDRA would never create any embarrassing collateral damage.
Wulf Renke, a much shorter, thinner man, turned away from one of the DNA sequencers and came toward Brandt. He stripped off his gloves, face shield, and then his surgical mask, revealing a head of short-cropped white hair and a carefully trimmed Vandyke beard and mustache. From a distance, he appeared jovial, even kind. It was only up close that one could see the callous, unblinking fanaticism in Renke’s dark brown eyes. The scientist divided all of humanity into two very unequal parts: those who sponsored his research and those on whom he could test the advanced biological and chemical horrors that were his forte.
He extended his hand with a slight smile of his own. “Erich! Welcome!
Come to collect our new batch of toys in person?” He nodded toward an insulated cooler filled with carefully labeled small clear vials. Packs containing dry ice lined the cooler. To reduce the risk that their bacterial hosts would run out of nutrients and start dying off, the HYDRA variants were kept frozen for as long as possible. “There they are, all packed up and ready for transport.”
“I am here to collect the Phase II variants, Herr Professor,” Brandt agreed quietly, shaking hands. “But we have other matters to discuss as well. Private matters,” he said meaningfully.
Renke raised a single, thin white eyebrow. “Oh?” He glanced over his shoulder at the other technicians and scientists busy in the lab before turning back to look up at the bigger man. “Then perhaps we should adjourn to my office.”
Brandt followed him to a windowless room just down the central hallway.
Shelves of books and other reference materials crowded one wall. Besides a desk and a computer, the tall, blond-haired man was not surprised to see a narrow cot and an untidy pile of blankets in one corner of the small room.
Renke was famous for his lack of interest in the material comforts so important to others. He lived almost
